


Salt

by Queue



Category: Shelter (2007)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, turning point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 19:15:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queue/pseuds/Queue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not that Shaun doesn't miss surfing. It's just that things have changed, and that maybe now he doesn't need it like he used to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Salt

**Author's Note:**

  * For [exeterlinden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/exeterlinden/gifts).



> Thanks are owed, in alphabetical order, to the following people/entities/organized masses of intelligent light: to my recipient, exeterlinden, absent whose prompt I would have left these amazing, flawed men alone with their single canonical story; [spuffyduds](http://spuffyduds.livejournal.com), who both knits and writes faster than I do, damn her eyes; [theamusedone](http://tao.dreamwidth.org), irreplaceable friend and necessary cheerleader; and Yuletide's Reigning Queens, without whom I would not have written at all this season.

"You were right about the LA surf, man."

Shaun stirs sleepily at the sound of Zach's voice, rubbing his face across the pillowcase and then doing it a couple more times just for the sheer smooth pleasure of it. Damn. The sheets at Larry's Pacific Bluffs place have got to be 800-count, maybe more. Feels fucking great on your skin, no matter what you're doing on 'em. Next story Shaun sells to a studio, he's taking Zach to that store where Tom Ford buys his sheets and they're getting a set like these for themselves in LA.

Because this? is nice, yeah, but honestly, it's more like a fucking hotel than somewhere anyone actually _lives_. All, like, marble columns and brushed stainless kitchen stuff and June still coming in on Tuesdays. Whereas the LA apartment, Cal Arts crazy neighbors and salt-rusted balcony railing and all--_that_ is home, and home deserves to be just as comfortable as Larry's empty-hearted showplace crib.

Home. Yeah. For maybe the first time ever, Shaun has somewhere that feels like, when he comes back to it, he actually _belongs_ there.

Could have something to do with Cody's toys, markers and clay and drawing paper, scattered all over the floor, so that it kind of looks like somebody blew up a Fisher Price My First Art Store and left the bodies where they landed. Could be connected with the fact that the walls, which started out painted that same boring rental-place beige as every other LA apartment Shaun's ever had, are so full of Zach's cranes and bridges and _colors_ that it's like living on the inside of some funky kaleidoscope. So long, security deposit--but _so_ worth it.

Or it could just be down to the way Shaun feels when he's with the two of them. Strong. Whole. Like things finally fucking make sense. Like he hasn't felt in... in...

Anyway. Surf. What the fuck is Zach talking about, surf? "I was?"

"Mmm. You were what?"

Shaun laughs. "Right, you idiot. About the surf in LA."

"Oh. Yeah."

"Really?" Shaun still has no fucking idea what they're talking about here, but he's gonna milk this for all it's worth before he owns up to that. Chances like this don't come along often enough to be wasted. "So let me get this straight. You're admitting I was right."

"Yeah." Zach's starting to sound sulky, which cracks Shaun's shit up, because it's exactly the same tone of voice they hear from Cody when the silver pen runs out.

"And about something to do with _surfing_? Man, where is my laptop, because I have got to write this down: 'Dear Diary, today my boyfriend'-- ow, ow, stop, Jesus, that tickles, quit!"

"That's kind of the point, you asshole." Zach's glare might be scarier if his face weren't still sleep-creased. His powers of torture by tickling, however, terrify Shaun, so ...

"Okay, okay. Chill out already." Zach puts his head back down, and Shaun brings his hand up, letting his fingers comb through the short, coarse hair, paint-flecked, that covers the curve of Zach's skull. The rough scrub of it makes his palm tingle. So different from past partners, gel-stiff or slick with the latest "product"--and that's if they even stayed long enough after to be touched without carnal intent. "So, tell me: what _was_ this monumental truth?"

Zach blows out a laugh against Shaun's chest. "Nice one, oh master. Guess I was right about you getting ooooold." Shaun flicks a finger across the crown of Zach's head where his cowlick's getting long, just to feel him flinch. "Ow. Quit, bitch. Nothing, really. Just--that first time, when you busted me waxing my longboard here at your dad's place."

"Stepdad's."

"Yeah. You said you missed the ocean in LA, that you didn't paddle out there."

"Yeah, okay, I remember this now." Shaun remembers the _day_, anyway, seeing Zach again after, what, three, four years of doing the LA circlejerk in more ways than one. Remembers the hour. Maybe even the minute. He's pretty sure his memory doesn't quite line up with Zach's, since for one thing, he has no fucking idea what he said about the surf, given that he was maybe a little distracted at the time. Since that's not the point, he doesn't bother bringing it up. "Still not clear what I was right about."

"LA surf, man. It sucks. Doesn't make sense--same ocean, same waves, same swell as SP--but I go out for a session and there's, like, nothing there."

Welcome to LA, Shaun thinks. Land of optical illusions, where everything looks perfect and most of it has slightly less substance than seafoam. Cynicism is catching, though, and hard to cure once you're infected, so he keeps that to himself and just listens.

"And most of the time it doesn't bother me that much." Shaun can feel Zach's frown against his ribs. "Like, right now I have way too much to do to get out there like I used to, like I _want_ to, even with the shitty waves and whatever. Too much even to _think_ about going. Final master's project coming up, the whole teaching-assistant thing--Jesus, I hope I wasn't that ignorant when I started at Cal Arts--getting Cody through school, everything. But then things ease up a little, and I think about the way surfing used to keep me focused, except with the shitty waves maybe not, and-- I don't know, Shaun, I just _miss_ it sometimes."

Zach raises his head suddenly and meets Shaun's eyes. "I mean, don't get me wrong"--and Shaun files away that anxious look as something to talk about later, because how can Zach still think Shaun offends that easy after everything they went through to get here?--"I'm not, like, pining for San Pedro. Shit, I'd have to be crazy for that--shut up, don't even say it, you have to know I _will_ take you out--" Shaun closes his mouth, grinning, and Zach puts his head back down. "What we have--it's _good_, Shaun. Sometimes I can't believe it--like, why me, y'know? Why us? How'd I get so lucky--and Cody, shit, how lucky is he to be here, right?"

"Luck goes both ways, man. All three ways." Shaun tilts his head and kisses Zach's temple, just for a second, putting his mouth against the pulse visible through the thin skin there. God. "Trust me on this, babe. It's all good."

For a moment Zach's body goes completely still against Shaun, every muscle tense. Then he's surging up and over, hands warm along the sides of Shaun's head as he tilts his own, and all at once he's kissing Shaun, again and again, deep and hot and needy.

Shaun relaxes into the kiss, looping his arms around Zach's neck and just letting Zach take his mouth. To be wanted so much in so many ways, after so many years of being the only one who wanted ... it's closer to a miracle than Shaun's ever really believed in.

Abruptly Zach pulls back, leaving Shaun breathless and just starting to ache. He drops down so he's lying on Shaun's chest and props his chin on his hands, inches from Shaun's nose. "Anyway," he says. "I miss it. Surfing. And now I get why you don't surf in LA, because it just--it doesn't _work_ there. That's all I'm saying."

"Huh. Okay."

Zach cocks his head. "Don't _you_ miss it? I mean, I know you're a city boy and all, but still."

"Nah." Shaun yawns. "Not as much as I used to, anyway. Before."

"What?" Zach pushes up on his elbows and stares at Shaun. "Why?"

Shit. Didn't mean to let that out. Distraction, distraction... Ah. "You mean why _not_. Grammar police are definitely coming, you ignorant ghetto trash."

"Rich fuck." Zach delivers his line in their familiar script without even a twitch that Shaun can see. They've been through this enough by now that its sting seems finally to have faded for Zach--as much as it's ever going to. "You're avoiding the question, dude."

"You noticed that, huh?"

"Hey, I may be ghetto trash, but I'm still smarter than you." _I got nowhere better to be, dude_, that look says, _so give it up already._ "Why _not_, then? Why don't you need to surf anymore?"

Because of you, Shaun almost says.

Because for me, surfing has always ultimately been about finding a way to belong to something bigger than myself, and God, this scares the shit out of me, but I think I might have found that in you.

Because you taste like the sea. Not just your cock, not just when you come, although God knows the rush that gives me feels like riding the biggest swell ever without falling even once. Not just your skin when we've been up on the boards or running all over the Esplanade, or when you've kept those beautiful artist's hands closed tight on the headboard like you were told and been so close to the edge for so long you can't even speak, can't do anything but moan like your heart broke a while back and you only just surfaced long enough to notice. But all of you, all the time, the stars on your wrist and the line of your back and the turned-down corner of your mouth.

Because you are my ocean.

Zach makes a buzzing noise, then starts humming an off-key version of the Jeopardy theme. At Shaun's theatrical wince, he breaks off, laughing. "Dude," he says. "Come on."

Shit. Okay. Maybe part of the truth will do it here. "It's not that I don't miss surfing," Shaun tells him. "I just--I don't need it the same way I used to, that's all. To wake me up, clear my head, get my juices flowing." He thinks about this for a minute. "I used to surf to, I don't know, to prove something to somebody. Somebo_dies_. Me. Larry. My publisher. The studios. Whoever. Prove I was ... worth my salt, I guess. But things have changed, things are different. Things are better. I don't need surfing for that stuff anymore."

Zach is shaking his head slowly, a teasing grin on his face. Shaun feels his own face crease into an answering grin. "What? Don't you get that? Doesn't that make sense to your tiny mind?"

Zach pokes him hard in the ribs. "What I get, man, is that you? Are just not a _real_ surfer."

"Never said I was." Shaun waits until Zach's body relaxes, then pounces and tries to pin him. "Never said I wasn't, either. Asshole. C'mere. I'm gonna make you pay for that crack."

"You and what army, old man?" Zach wraps his arms and legs around Shaun, shaking with laughter, and nothing Shaun can do loosens his hold. When Shaun finally gives up, panting and laughing himself, they're spooned on their sides in a tangled mess of covers, limbs wound around one another like a Moebius strip. Shaun can feel Zach half hard behind him, can feel himself hardening beneath Zach's callused palm. It's pleasurable, a good feeling, surprisingly undemanding. Time enough later to act on it, Shaun thinks, beginning to doze in the circle of Zach's arms.

Suddenly: "Shaun. Know you don't need surfing. D'you need LA?" Zach's voice is muffled, his breath a warm tickle against the back of Shaun's neck.

Shaun tries to shake off sleep, to give the question the attention it deserves. Not that he doesn't know the answer already without really having to think about it--novels don't have to be written in La-La Land, thank God--but the fact that it's come up, and come up now...well.

"Don't you?" he finally says, cautiously.

"Don' know yet. An' I asked you first," Zach says, yawning. "You don't have t' answer right now. Think about it. But just so you know, wherever you want-- you _need_ to go, Cody and me'll go with you. Wherever, man. Long's there's ocean 'n' something to tag. Just not a farm, 'kay? Can't handle tagging cows." His arm tightens across Shaun's chest even as Shaun feels his breathing deepen into sleep.

Four years together, building a real life in the middle of Faketown USA, and Shaun's still not used to being the one who's held. The one on the inside. It's beyond nice, beyond good; it's becoming necessary to him, like writing and loving and breathing.

Like having--finally, finally, after more than thirty years--a family of his own.


End file.
